page_title: Brigham Young University LGBT history
section_title: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Brigham Young University LGBT history / Timeline of BYU LGBT History / 1970s
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover to the pamphlet containing apostle Boyd Packer's 1978 BYU speech on homosexuality.
context_page_description: Students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have a long, documented history at Brigham Young University, and have experienced a range of treatment by other students and school administrators over the decades. BYU is the largest religious university in North America and is the flagship institution of the educational system of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Historically, experiences for BYU students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have included being banned from enrolling due to their romantic attractions in the 60s, being required by school administration to undergo electroshock and vomit aversion therapies in the 70s, having nearly 80% of BYU students refusing to live with an openly homosexual person in a poll in the 90s, and a ban on coming out into the 2000s.
context_section_description: 1971 – Jim Dabakis enrolled at BYU after serving an LDS mission, but left and came out at as gay at the age of 23. He was elected to the Utah State Senate in 2012.
  1971 – Kenneth Mark Storer was a gay Mormon BYU graduate student. He would later become a pastor in the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church in Salt Lake, Boise, and Tacoma, and a leader in an AIDS-victim advocacy group in the 80s.
  1973 – It was decided by the BYU Board of Trustees that the ban on people attracted to those of the same sex would be lifted and they could enroll at BYU with local church leadership permission as long as they were not sexually expressing their attractions.
  1973 – BYU psychology professor Allen Bergin published an article in the July New Era portraying some homosexuals as "psychologically disturbed persons" who are "compulsively driven to frequent and sometimes bizarre acts." He cited two clients with "compulsive or uncontrollable homosexuality" caused by intense fear for the opposite sex, a lack of social skills for male-female relationships, and seeking security exclusively from the same sex. Bergin discussed the behaviorist sexual orientation change efforts he used in an attempt to change their same-sex sexual behavior and attractions.
  1974 – BYU president Oaks delivered a speech on campus in which he spoke in favor of keeping criminal punishment for "deviate sexual behavior" such as private, consensual, same-sex sexual activity. The speech was later printed by the university's press.
  1974 – Church president Kimball addressed the BYU student body stating that sex reassignment surgeries were an appalling travesty.
  1975 – As part of the ongoing BYU security homosexual entrapment campaigns, BYU security claimed that an agency director for the US Department of Social Services man was caught soliciting sex by tapping his feet in a bathroom stall next to an undercover officer while visiting the campus, but the man denied the charges and called the security sting harassment. BYU banned the man from campus after he refused to meet with campus officials.
  1976 – The church-operated university BYU began a purge in January to expel homosexual students as part of president Oaks' widespread campaign to curtail the influence of homosexual people on campus. The purge including interrogations of fine arts and drama students and surveillance of Salt Lake City gay bars by BYU security. These activities were noted in the Salt Lake Tribune and the gay newspaper Advocate.
  1976 – BYU music professor Carlyle Marsden completed suicide two days after being outed by an arrest for alleged homosexual activity.
  1976 – A 20-year study by a BYU Sociology professor is published showing that 10% of BYU men and 2% of BYU women indicated having had a "homosexual experience." In 1950, 1961, and 1972 Wilford E. Smith conducted a survey of thousands of Mormon students at several universities including many from the BYU sociology department as part of a larger survey. He found that "the response of Mormons [at BYU] did not differ significantly from the response of Mormons in state universities."
  1977 – After hearing anti-gay rhetoric from BYU professor Reed Payne, BYU student Cloy Jenkins and gay BYU instructor Lee Williams produced the Payne Papers (later called Prologue) outlining information and experiences in defense of homosexual Mormons. It was later anonymously mailed to all high-ranking church leaders.
  1977 Stephan Zakharias (formerly Stephen James Matthew Prince) and a group of other lesbian and gay Mormons and former-Mormons organized the first official LGBTQ Mormon group under the name Affirmation: Gay Mormons United on June 11 in Salt Lake City at the conference for the Salt Lake Coalition for Human Rights.
  1978 – The apostle Boyd K. Packer delivered a sermon at BYU on March 5 entitled "To the One", which went on to be published by the church as a pamphlet. Packer characterizes homosexual interaction as a perversion and presents the possibility that it had its roots in selfishness and could be cured with "unselfish thoughts, with unselfish acts." He s
caption: Pamphlet cover to a reprint of Packer's BYU speech on homosexuality.
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